


Tempered

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Less Traditional Time Travel, M/M, Past Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-05 12:28:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16367774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: It was a perfectly normal summer's day when Harry met his doom.(Or in a world where Voldemort wins, something was amiss.)





	Tempered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TanninTele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanninTele/gifts).



> Thanks to RedHorse for beta-ing/enduring the occasional rant/being generally encouraging. You're the best.

It was a perfectly normal summer's day when Harry met his doom.

 

Harry was sprawled in the shade of a battered old play set in the park, blessedly unoccupied by excitable children due to the efforts of Dudley and his, uh, associates, who claimed it for their own less-than-upstanding purposes. Harry's T-shirt, an especially worn  hand-me-down, clung to his sweat-soaked skin.

 

"Look sharp, Harry Potter."

 

The harsh voice cut into Harry's reverie, causing him to jump. His wand dug painfully into his hip, tucked as it was in the waistband of his jeans. He drew it with shaking, slippery fingers. "Who are you?"

 

The man, leaning back on his heels in front of Harry's refuge, gave an ironic twist of his lips and said, "You may call me Tom, I suppose."

 

Tom? Just Tom, Harry thought. Just a name. There are a lot of Toms. And yet it fell heavily into the stagnant air.

 

"You may as well come out of there," the man—Tom—continued, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping long, pale fingers. Harry peered at him cautiously from where he crouched. He was tall and slender, a silken black robe cascading down his frame, shoulder-length black hair swept back from his forehead—almost prettily, Harry thought in a daze. And a wizard, if his knowledge of Harry's name hadn't been a dead giveaway already. Red eyes—red? What the hell?—studied Harry with an indiscernible expression. Tom didn't really strike Harry as familiar (Voldemort had eyes like those, but there was no way in hell this was him, since Harry remained among the living), but he wasn't quite unfamiliar, either.

 

"Why should I come out?" Harry mumbled. "There's shade down here." In a manner of speaking. The sun may have been blocked out, but beneath the play set was no cooler than the rest of the park. Possibly the opposite.

 

Tom gave a heavy sigh. "There is more comfortable shade to be found elsewhere."

 

He wasn't wrong. There was a bench planted in the shade of a tree, unpolluted by the attentions of Dudley’s friends. Harry crawled forward and scrambled to his feet, dusting off his trousers. "What do you want? Why are you here?" If Harry gave him what he wanted, then the sooner he would leave and the sooner Harry could get back to his reverie. He led the way across to the bench and perched on the edge, prepared to bolt.

 

"From you, I want nothing. The world demands rather a lot of you, hmm?" Tom sat on the other end, appearing far more relaxed. Harry was sure it was an act.

 

"Er, I guess."

 

"As to why I am here?" Tom looked thoughtful. "To see."

 

Harry blinked at him, finally realizing that maybe he should be a bit creeped out. Maybe Tom was just one of those rabid Harry Potter fans, although this sort of thing had never happened before. Confused, Harry muttered, "Okay, well, I still have homework to finish." Technically true, though he had yet to start any of it. He could do it whenever he wished now, rather than exclusively in the dead of night, which was brill. It was the best thing Sirius had managed to do for him. Godfathers falsely accused of mass murder and on the run from justice had their perks.

 

Tom raised a thin eyebrow. "Naturally."

 

An awkward silence stretched between them. "Um," Harry said. "You really don't want anything from me?"

 

Tom was drinking Harry in, though trying —and failing —to be discreet about it. His gaze kept darting from Harry's chest to his face, and Harry's skin prickled. "No," he murmured, "for now."

 

"Okay." Harry fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, Tom still watching him from the corner of his eye. Harry became increasingly annoyed. Couldn't this prat just leave already?

 

"You're right, of course," Tom said, perhaps sensing Harry's agitation and rising to his feet. "There are things to be done. Good day to you, Harry Potter." He Disapparated silently before Harry could reply.

 

What the hell had that been? Harry curled up under the play set again and tried to forget the strangeness.

 

The next afternoon, however, he received a letter inviting him to appear as a witness at Sirius Black's trial. Great. Now he was anxious, as well as confused.

 

*

 

There were a great many things he missed about his former appearance: the fear it inspired, the notoriety. Glamors itched, however, and his preferred appearance would do him no favors at the moment.

 

He'd acquired _this_ face—a crude imitation of what it had been in his earliest days—after the third or fourth resurrection. Similar components had been used from one body to the next: servant's flesh, father's bone, enemy's blood. A dash or two of unicorn and serpent. He could make no more than haphazard guesses as to how the changes had come about, but his best was that time tempered even him. So be it. He would not allow such purported temperance to hinder him. He was here, after all, to do it all again, and to do it better.

 

(The scrap of his soul he had carried with him for centuries, shrunken and sheathed beneath his robes, was livelier than it had ever been.)

 

*

 

Sirius was proven innocent without a hitch. Someone had turned in Wormtail; an explanation was never given. Harry, much to his relief, hardly had to do anything. "Yes, I saw Pettigrew that night. Yes, Sirius said he hadn't been the Secret Keeper."

 

“Very well,” Amelia Bones, the trial’s officiate, said with a sigh. “All those in favor of clearing the accused of all charges?”

 

The majority of the hands went up.

 

Bones massaged her forehead, removed her monocle, put it back in. “A trial for Mr. Pettigrew will be scheduled for next week.” Pettigrew was dragged off by dementors, squeaking.

 

After fourth year, Harry moved in with Sirius. It was unfamiliar and disconcerting for Harry, this undivided, solicitous attention. Remus joined them within a couple months, muttering about how he wasn't in need of Sirius's charity. Sirius happily ignored him.

 

Yes, it was strange, but not unpleasant. Sirius sang in the shower, off-key and loud enough to wake the dead. Harry could take showers whenever he wished. He could eat as much as he wanted (plus nutritional potions recommended by a rather appalled healer).

 

It was like a proper family, Sirius and Remus told Harry whenever he clammed up. No need to be shy or ashamed. "None of what they did to you was your fault," they would tell him. He tried his best to believe.

 

“Hell,” Sirius would say. “My mum was a right old hag. I ran away. Real families are what you make.”

 

(Before Vernon and Petunia could be prosecuted for criminal neglect, they were found tortured and very dead. The murders were never solved. The Muggle police could find no useful forensic evidence, and the Aurors could find no magical traces.)

 

*

 

The world became quiet and empty to him as the decades, then centuries, passed. The years slid by like moments. His subjects forgot him. He became the stuff of their legends, of their distant hate. It was necessary to cull some of the more notable dissidents every generation or so. Best they not remember why they hated, so that the rebellious spirit could not be passed along. All for the greater good of his rule. All of it was so very…

 

Disappointing. Tedious. Boring. Century after century.

 

And he believed he was also—

 

Lonely. (He had never dreamed of feeling such things; he had never wanted to.)

 

*

 

Hogwarts continued as it always had—erm, prior to Harry’s first year, or so Fred and George claimed. Harry's fourth and fifth years had no near-death incidents. "It's like you got good luck from somewhere, mate," Ron observed. “Must have done something right, eh?”

 

"Oh, it's just coincidental," Hermione retorted.

 

Harry didn't care either way. He could enjoy his classes, could appreciate the Triwizard Tournament as a harmless spectacle. He could learn Defense from the terrifying and brilliant Mad-Eye Moody. He could prepare for his OWLs, and get Os in two. (More than he had ever expected.)

 

"Harry, my boy. There are things I must teach you," Dumbledore said at the beginning of his sixth year, his lined face grave.

 

"What sorts of things?" Harry asked, uncertain. Since Harry’s removal from the Dursleys’, his and Dumbledore’s relationship had been strained and near to nonexistent. Harry preferred not to contemplate why.

 

"Things about Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore said, his blue eyes going sharp.

 

"He _hasn't_ returned, though," Harry protested, remembering with a chill the prophecy Professor Trelawney had spoken at the end of his third year. That had been about Wormtail fleeing to Voldemort in order to aid him, and Wormtail was now rotting in Azkaban. He must have been caught on his way to Voldemort’s hideout. Prophecy successfully thwarted, right? "Maybe he never will," Harry finished hopefully.

 

"He is biding his time, I expect," Dumbledore replied with a heavy sigh. "My sources said he was in Albania, but he seems to have disappeared from there several years ago. You must be prepared. He will not stay away forever. Humphrey Belcher, after all, did not give up after the debacle of his first cheese cauldron."

 

“Um,” Harry said.

 

Harry learned about the orphan Tom Riddle, so much like Harry in his loneliness and abandonment, so different in his hostility and vindictiveness. And sure, it was interesting, but Harry didn't understand how it could help him defeat a wizard exponentially more powerful than he was. "Why me?" he finally asked Dumbledore, frustrated to the point where holding his tongue was impossible.

 

"Ah, that." And Dumbledore told him about another prophecy, spoken in a smoky upper room on a winter’s night when all hope had fled.

 

 _And the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not_ …

 

“But I’m just Harry. How can it be true?”

 

“Voldemort believes it is true, Harry. And, incidentally, those of us who are not Lord Voldemort tend to think far less of ourselves than we are.”

 

“Oh,” Harry said. Somehow, this did not reassure him.

 

 _And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives_ …

 

*

 

“ _Master, why?_ ” Nagini lay stretched out fully, stuck in place so she would not writhe and disrupt the spell.

 

“ _It is for the best_ ,” he assured her gently, laying the glittering replacement vessel along side her and finishing the runes for transference.

 

“ _Did I do wrong?_ ” she asked, plaintive as only a serpent could be.

 

“ _No_ ,” he replied shortly, and cast.

 

Later, he wondered if leaving Nagini as she was would have lessened his bereavement. But he could not abide the weakness a living horcrux represented, and thus the scrap of soul she contained had to be moved. The new vessel in which he placed it was worthy beyond a doubt, wrested as it had been from the fool who tried to kill her.

 

(And then he had used it to — But no. He would prefer not to consider it.)

 

*

 

Seventh year was as peaceful as the preceding years had been. Ron and Hermione started dating, accompanied by loud arguments and very public snogging. “They’re like James and Lily,” Sirius concluded fondly, when he bore witness to an especially memorable row at Christmas.

 

Harry finished Hogwarts without notable incident and went into the Auror Trainee Program. The peace was nice, and he tried to enjoy it, but the foreboding born of unexpected respite and Dumbledore’s worries never eased.

 

And then there were the occasional mentions in the _Daily_ _Prophet_ of a wizard that appeared and disappeared without a name or trace or much of anything to remember him by, except for one rather delirious account of “freaky-arse red eyes.” Whenever he read a snippet about him, Harry could not help but think of Tom, who’s appearance in Privet Drive seemed to have precipitated so many good things in Harry’s life.

 

"I wonder if he's the one who turned Wormtail in," Sirius said one morning, reading over Harry's shoulder. "Considering how he just seems to do good shit."

 

"But who is he?" Remus argued. "And how on earth would he have known where to find Wormtail's sorry arse?"

 

“Maybe he went to school with you and knew your secret,” Harry guessed.

 

“Not a chance,” Sirius and Remus replied together.

 

“The only one who may have known is Snape, and he would never do anything to help me,” Sirius added darkly.

 

*

 

When he returned, it was at the last moments he had originally spent as a wraith prior to Wormtail’s serendipitous arrival. The wraith dissolved into the ether as he arrived. There could be only one soul within any given timeline, after all, and he did not mourn his past self. He did not miss those days of wandering and emptiness; he might have reconsidered this project if it had meant repeating them. And yet what was the hypothetical price of such pain worth compared to all he stood to gain?

 

"Hello, Wormtail," he said, scooping up the rat as soon as he poked his twitching nose out of the grass. "Fancy seeing you here."

 

The rat squeaked and thrashed, trying to sink his teeth into the fleshy part of his hand. "None of that, now," he murmured, Stunning him with an impatient tightening of his fingers. "I'd say you and I have things to do." He tucked the unconscious rat into a pocket.

 

*

 

Auror training was bloody exhausting. Some nights, Harry would stop by the Leaky Cauldron on his way home for a drink, sequestering himself in a corner booth so as not to be noticed and hailed by adoring fans. It was on one of these evenings that he met Tom again.

 

"Hello, Harry Potter." Harry started, looking up to find Tom standing in front of his table, as if the hastily cast Notice-Me-Not Charm wasn't there. He was exactly as Harry remembered—well-dressed and well-groomed—and Harry could feel himself going warm at the collar.

 

"Er, hi."

 

"Mind if I join you? It's been a long time."

 

“Yeah, why not?” Harry said. Perhaps he oughtn’t been so eager. Tom had barged past Harry’s Notice-Me-Not Charm —a severe break in courtesy in most circles —but Harry was too intrigued and too happy to meet him again to care.

 

"Wonderful." Tom smiled with a few too many teeth and sat. "How have you been, Harry?"

 

Harry shifted awkwardly. "Fine." He took a sip of his butter beer, swallowed too fast, and put a hand to his chest in pain. Tom looked sympathetic and cast _anapnio_ without batting an eye.

 

"That is good to hear. Your new living arrangements seem to have done wonders." Harry Potter’s abusive Muggle upbringing was no secret these days, and Sirius and Remus were hailed as saints.

 

"Yeah, Sirius and Remus are great." And, Harry supposed, he had come a long way from that skinny, underfed boy beneath the play set. The nutritional potions had given him something of a build, though he remained slender.

 

"Who are you, really?" Harry said, desperate for a change of subject. He remembered the account of “freaky-arse eyes,” and wondered if his passing suspicion was accurate.

 

"The _Daily Prophet_ refers to me as "The Disappearing Wizard," for they lack a proper name."

 

Well, shit, Harry thought dazedly. He was right. He gazed at Tom with new warmth. “Why didn’t you give them one?”

 

Tom winked, leaning forward across the table. "I haven’t the time for them. But would you like to know more, Harry?" His ruby eyes gleamed, arresting and strange. Harry could not look away.

 

"Yes," he heard himself say. "I really, really would."

 

*

 

It was easier than he expected to find the boy. There was protection, based on his mother's sacrifice, but it only prevented him from entering the house. The boy spent little time there during the day.

 

And Harry was not quite what he expected. So small and so resigned, watching him like a feral cat, so wary. He himself had never been resigned, but he remembered the wariness too well. (Bite if they reach out, for they never did so in kindness.)

 

"Look sharp, Harry Potter," he said, and the boy looked, and oh he was alive alive alive! Green eyes wide in the narrow face, hair so wild and dark. (He remembered this. How could he forget?)

 

He watched his fill—but no, he could never see enough—then left the boy where he found him. He had waited so long. What was a little longer? (The rat, still unconscious in his pocket, could not dampen his exultation.)

 

*

 

Harry and Tom met for drinks several times—at the Cauldron for its hominess, at posher places Harry had never dared go. The conversation was stimulating. Tom dangled the promise of _more,_ and Harry could not resist him.

 

(Was it his looks? His whit? His interest in everything Harry said? Harry really didn’t know.)

 

Tom took him to a play in a Muggle theater for a change of scenery. Harry reveled in the skill of the actors and the thoughtfulness with which Tom watched the stage. "I slipped into this very theater once when I was a child. I had no money for the ticket. They did not catch me."

 

"How long ago was that?" Harry asked, elbowing him playfully.

 

“Oh, a long time," Tom said. "Longer than you can imagine."

 

And Harry believed him.

 

"Oh, but Harry, would you like to know more?" And Tom was looking at him with a nakedly hungry expression, his eyes awash in it, his long-fingered hand heavy upon Harry's knee.

 

"Fuck yes. I want to know everything.” They left the theater, Ended up behind a layer of Privacy Charms against the wall of an alley.

 

Tom was overwhelming. There was no other word for it. One of his hands curled around the back of Harry's neck as he kissed him—devoured him. Harry moved against him, whining into his mouth. "Oh, filthy boy," Tom purred. "What do you want?"

 

"You," Harry pleaded. "Please."

 

"How can I possibly deny you?" Tom said, fingers working open Harry's shirt to massage one of his nipples. Harry groaned. Tom's hand moved further down to undo Harry's fly. Harry thrust desperately into his hand.

 

“I could remove the charms, Harry,” Tom hissed. “Let unsuspecting passersby hear the sweet noises you make.”

 

Harry moaned more loudly still.

 

There was a warmth blossoming between them, revelatory and wondrous, beyond anything. "What is that?" Harry asked.

 

"Our truth," Tom said, matter-of-fact, and continued his ministrations. Harry came explosively into Tom’s hand, slumping against the alley's wall.

 

*

 

He strode into the ministry the first time without anyone batting an eye. They saw what they expected to see: a wizard unworthy of notice, an employee—or perhaps employee-to-be—at the bottom of the heap. It was all as he remembered it—before he'd had it abandoned to the whims of goblins and trolls and moved the ministry to the most ostentatious place imaginable on the surface.

 

"I believe you will find this rat to be of interest," he said to the tall, clean-shaven Auror he accosted outside a cubicle decorated with maps and Sirius Black’s gaunt face. (Shacklebolt, he recalled, so very brave, so very weak in the end. He had not died well.) "It will bring your search for Sirius Black to a satisfactory conclusion for most parties."

 

"How so?" Shacklebolt grumbled, his skepticism obvious. "Seriously, this had better be good. I'm on my lunch break. It’s never long enough." Shacklebolt moved to block his entrance, but he brushed him aside. “What the hell?”

 

Ignoring this outburst, he removed the unconscious rat from his pocket and plopped it onto Shacklebolt's cluttered desk. "Would you mind casting a Reverse-Transformation spell for me?"

 

"Fine." Rolling his eyes, Shacklebolt jabbed his wand at the rat, which cracked and stretched and ballooned its way into the emaciated form of Peter Pettigrew. "Merlin's balls," he said, gaping. "That's a fucking dead man."

 

"Not so dead, is he?" he noted. "Best get on it, then. Murder investigations to reopen, trials to schedule." He gave Shacklebolt a mocking wave and spun on his heel to leave.

 

"Well, there went my lunch breaks for the next week. Who the hell are you?" Shacklebolt called.

 

"I was never here," he tossed over his shoulder and departed.

 

*

 

"You're really getting along with this new boyfriend of yours," Sirius teased at breakfast one morning, pointing shamelessly at a bruise on Harry's throat.

 

Harry grinned at him, managing not to blush. "He's great."

 

"Brilliant. Your dad would be so proud. You're an Auror trainee, _and_ you're getting some."

 

Ron and Hermione were even nosier. "But who is he, Harry?" Hermione asked him when the two of them were getting lunch together. "You just said his name is Tom, but you don't know anything else about him?"

 

"Ugh, do I have to know?" But he heard her, and he knew her caution was correct. Didn’t mean he was prepared to give up the mind-blowing sex, though. He buried his misgivings. And yet—

 

Harry dreamed sometimes of events so clearly they could only be memories, but they were not his. He felt the ghost of a connection, a hint, a whisper. But when he tried to follow it to its source, he was gently rebuffed.

 

Oh, but the dreams—

 

_A pallid, spidery hand clutching a wand. "If you do not surrender, then your deaths will not be painless." His voice claws jaggedly from his chest. Some surrender. Some do not. The latter are dealt with. So be it._

_Other times, the one standing opposite him does not cower. He speaks of remorse, of second chances. Harry can never see his face; it is blurred with sentiment, with something akin to adoration._

 

Harry always woke to confusion and to a sensation, not quite pain, in his forehead.

 

*

 

Dumbledore tried to find him, but he slipped through his grasping fingers like an eel. Subtlety had been an underappreciated art before. Now, he reveled in it. He could do what he pleased. The boy, then, was easy to lure when the time came. And oh, had he grown. A beauty, more so than he remembered. Perhaps having a true place in the world and a caring family will do such things. His doing, if not openly. The boy would never forget it.

 

*

 

_Dear Harry,_

_If it is amenable to you, I would like to schedule a meeting over sensitive matters. Kindly reply with a date and time that will best suit you._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

 

Harry read through the letter, his throat going dry with dread. What could be the matter?

 

"Voldemort _has_ returned," Dumbledore said as soon as Harry entered the office.

 

"How do you know?"

 

"There are artefacts that he hid away many years ago, artefacts that contain a piece of his soul."

 

"The horcruxes," Harry clarified. "I think you've mentioned them before."

 

"Yes. I cannot find a single one. I fear that he has seen fit to relocate them."

 

"Is that the only proof?"

 

"Perhaps not." Dumbledore sighed, his deeply lined face creased even more with concern. "The _Daily_ _Prophet's_ darling mysterious wizard. Who is he? If it is indeed Lord Voldemort, then he has changed much since his last bid for power."

 

Tom's crimson eyes flashed in Harry's mind. "Oh," he managed. "Oh." Because how many people had eyes like that? (How many, indeed. Harry had met only two, who, perhaps, were one and the same.)

 

*

 

The boy began to suspect. He could tell in the faint disturbance of their judiciously muted connection, the occasional awkwardness of Harry's greetings. He had prepared for this eventuality, had resisted the temptation to pursue bolder paths. He had waited so long already. He had time—blessed time—now.

 

("There are things worse than death, Tom," Dumbledore had assured him at every opportunity. It was only much later—deified and alone—that he started to believe him.)

 

Lord Voldemort did not regret. The past was of no concern, for he was immortal and eternal. Present and future were one. He needed not the past, and yet he was bereft, adrift. Seventeen years. Seventeen years of having a fated foe, an equal, a shared destiny of death and transcendence. But when Harry was gone—the prophecy fulfilled, his rule assured—well, he found nothing satisfying. Thus, he decided, something needed to be done forthwith. Resurrection enchantments more powerful than any he had ever used for himself, perhaps. Dark magic that had yet to be invented.

 

 _He_ invented it. Nothing, not even time, would stand in his way.

 

*

 

Harry didn't quite know how to act around Tom now that Dumbledore's suspicions kept plaguing him. He tried to carry on as usual.

 

But the dreams got stranger. The same scene repeated night after night.

 

_He stands in the Great Hall, enraged and fearful, as his opponent speaks. He stands so proud, so brave. He believes in the nonsense he spouts._

_They raise their wands. But the wand in his hand isn't loyal to him; it yearns for his foe. He draws a blade_ _—goblin-made, with rubies in the hilt_ _—with his left hand, throws it as his foe shouts a spell. The blade flies home. His foe stumbles at the impact and puts his hand to his rapidly reddening chest—_

 

The face of the other person in the dream had been blurred at first, but became progressively clearer night after night.

 

It was Harry himself.

 

He had stayed over at Tom's flat on that particular night, and so woke covered in cold sweat and cuddled against Tom's side. Tom sat up as Harry struggled into wakefulness. "What is it?"

 

"I keep dreaming of my own death," Harry croaked. "I don't get it. It isn't from my perspective and—" And his scar was faintly twinging. Tom's hand rested against his back, and that usual, inexplicable warmth stretched between them—

 

"Oh fuck," Harry said. "Oh fuck fuck fuck."

 

"Goodness, what is the occasion?" Tom asked. Harry cringed away from his touch and threw his feet ofor the side of the bed, standing shakily.

 

"It's you," Harry replied. "You're bloody Voldemort, and I've been sharing dreams with you I’ve been sleeping with you." His heart was pounding in his terror, goose bumps racing up his arms.

 

Tom was Voldemort. Why was Harry still alive?

 

"Harry, please calm down." Tom also got up, seeming utterly relaxed, utterly unfazed by Harry's accusation. "I have no intention of killing you."

 

"Oh, fantastic," Harry snapped. He wasn't denying it. Why wasn't he denying it?

 

"We've been sharing dreams," Harry repeated blankly. "You dream about—" Tom put a finger to his lips, hushing him.

 

"That's true."

 

"Why?" Harry demanded. "Why havent you killed me? You were pretty fucking insistent about it during my first year. Why are we sharing dreams?"

 

“Let’s discuss this over tea, hmm?”

 

“I don’t want tea,” Harry said flatly.

 

Tom ignored this. "It is not a pleasant history, Harry," he said, striding purposefully to the kitchen, Harry just behind him. "But I will repeat: I do not wish to kill you."

 

"But—" The prophecy, Harry thought but didn't say.

 

"I will tell you, but only if you will hear me out and not take this straight to your colleagues or to Dumbledore."

 

Tom put on a pot of tea, which boiled almost instantly at a tap of his wand, then placed a cup in front of Harry. Harry cradled it in trembling hands. "And what if I do tell them?"

 

"Oh, I'll likely disappear, and they will never find any proof." Tom smiled. "It doesn't much concern me."

 

Oh, but it did. Harry knew it, as surely as he knew that Ron and Hermione were terrible for each other and that it would never stop them. There was that sense of emotion, so much less distant than it had been. "If you don't want me dead," Harry began, "then why do you dream of killing me?"

 

"Because in my past, darling, I did exactly that. I have never regretted anything more." Tom appeared momentarily surprised at this statement. But before Harry could be sure, his expression had smoothed into impassivity.

 

*

 

He suspected now that the boy was more than he appeared. And oh, he was as brilliant as he expected him to be. No, there was more. The dream sharing. The distant snatches of emotions that were not his own. But the theory was an impossible one. Harry couldn't be.

 

It was worse than he had ever guessed. Not only had he killed his prophecied foe, his equal, he had destroyed his own soul.

 

And it was this realization that caused Harry to see his own death.

 

"Please hear me out." Sincerity, like subtlety, an untapped art.

 

"I have never regretted anything more." Somehow, the truest sentiment he had ever voiced.

 

"I have to go," Harry said, pouring out the rest of his tea. "I need to think about this more before I can actually process anything."

 

"Take your time," Tom said with forced casualness.

 

*

 

As Harry left Tom’s, the sensation of eyes on the back of his neck followed him too, too far.

 

He went to work as usual, so badly distracted that even Tonks noticed something was wrong. "What happened to you, Harry?" she asked, plonking herself on the edge of his tiny trainee's desk.

 

"Just stuff," he muttered.

 

"Distraction like that makes you a danger to yourself and others," Tonks said in a scarily good impression of Scrimgeour, her hair turning tawny to match.

 

"It's not a big deal," Harry said. "Really."

 

“Oh? Not that new boyfriend of yours?” She winked roguishly. “He’s quite the catch. And that arse!”

 

He shook his head, blushing. “Shut up.”

 

"If you say so." She slid to the floor and bounded off, her hair turning a rather attractive black as she went.

 

He kept turning Tom's cryptic words over and over: during sleepless nights, at work (“Potter’s spaced out again.” “Potter, snap out of it!”), at Ron’s and Hermione’s new flat (they hardly noticed, given their loud discussions on décor and decorum). _In my past, I already did._ What the bloody hell was that supposed to mean?

 

Curiosity got the better of him in the end. Curiosity, and his weakness, and his rather unhealthy obsession with Tom’s dick.

 

He sent Tom an owl, the first he had ever sent him. Tom’s response was immediate. Harry unfurled the parchment with shaking fingers. The handwriting was lovely and familiar, a disconcerting reminder of the diary in his second year. (If he had any doubts left as to Tom’s true identity, then they had just been put to rest.)

 

Tom slid into the booth across from him, an exact mirror of their second meeting. “You have made up your mind, then,” he said.

 

Harry nodded. “I want to know everything.”

 

Tom threw up a second Privacy Charm. “There is no telling what horrors will occur if we are overheard.”

 

That was ominous. Harry breathed in, held it, let it out. “Talk,” he said.

 

“I traveled back through time, as you may have guessed.”

 

“How far in the future?” Harry’s mind kept throwing horrific images of an immortal Voldemort, ruling with an iron fist and with no impunity. Muggles being slaughtered, Muggle-borns rounded up, who knew what else.

 

“2318,” Tom said.

 

Morgana’s sagging tits! Harry’s expression caused Tom to chuckle.

 

“Yes, I took rather a long time, ‘tis true.”

 

“No shit.” Harry fidgeted, fidgeted some more. “Why?”

 

“There is much that I regret, Harry,” Tom said, his eyes alight with sincerity. “So many died, and for what? And you… what is a world without you in it?”

 

“I don’t…” Harry began. “What is so important about me?”

 

“Oh, darling.” Tom rose from his spot across the table and slid in beside Harry, his arm curling around Harry’s shoulders. Harry leaned into him, breathing in the scent of old books and fine robes. The wondrous warmth blossomed wherever they touched. “You are my fated equal.”

 

“But I’m supposed to vanquish you,” Harry protested, not moving from the comfortable embrace.

 

“I have killed you. You have killed me. The prophecy’s terms have been met.” He sighed. “And there is one more thing.”

 

Harry felt cold dread creeping back. “What is it?”

 

“You carry a piece of my soul. Left behind when I came to Godric’s Hollow, protected so graciously for all these years.”

 

“No,” Harry whispered.

 

“Oh, yes. Dumbledore has been searching for my horcruxes, hasn’t he? I wonder what his plans were for you?” It was a rhetorical question, Harry knew, his heart sinking down to his twisting stomach. He, Harry, was meant to die.

 

“What else has he kept from you?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry said.

 

“No, perhaps not.” Tom drew Harry closer still. “But I will not allow death to claim you. I have been without you for far too long.”

 

Harry felt some amount of unbridled gratification at these words, this shameless admission, this vulnerability. “I don’t understand why I’m so important to you —"

 

“You do not need to understand, only to hear me out. I won my war with blood and hate, and I will not deny that the results suited me for a time.”

 

Harry rocked back. Suited him for a time? For fucking centuries. “And this is supposed to convince me that you’ve changed?”

 

Tom blinked. “I don’t quite know what you mean by ‘changed,’ Harry. But I have had many years to reflect.”

 

“Okay,” Harry said, still doubtful.

 

“There is a better way to bring about my vision,” Tom continued. “Much better. One that doesn’t require your death.”

 

Harry shuddered. “A better way to what?”

 

Tom gave a slow, sharp-toothed smile. “Who’s to say, Harry? If you remain with me, then you will have a say in whatever I do. Otherwise…” He let the sentence trail away, the hint of threat in his words oddly reassuring in its resemblance to the Voldemort Harry remembered from his first year.

 

“Whatever you do that you bother telling me about, you mean,” Harry muttered.

 

“We share a soul, darling. What could I ever keep from you?”

 

Right. That bit of fucking Voldemort’s soul that had been freeloading. Harry knew it should have felt wrong, now that he was aware of it, but there was only warmth. And Tom, who was Voldemort, which…

 

“Okay,” he said. For the briefest moment, Tom’s triumph was wild and heavy, and felt like Harry’s own. Then it quieted, replaced with shivering contentment. Harry flopped into Tom’s lap, Tom’s fingers trailing through his hair.

 

“That’s it, darling,” Tom said. “Stay with me, and live well.”

 

And as Tom undressed him upon their hurried return to his flat, trailing kisses over every inch of skin, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret.

 

*

 

“Harry,” Dumbledore said over tea in his office, an invitation which Harry had been loath to accept. “What do you know?”

 

Harry set his untouched tea down, wondering what would happen if he told him the truth. But Dumbledore had placed him with the Dursleys, had perhaps been aware of their abuse and done nothing about it. Harry owed him nothing. “I don’t know anything, professor,” he said.

 

Dumbledore looked doubtful and sad. “Are you quite sure?”

 

“Yes, sir.” Easier to lie, when he was watching the portraits in their varied interpretations of feigned sleep.

 

“I hope it will all be for the best, then.” There was something in Dumbledore’s voice, a weariness of decades. “You are not a fool, Harry, and far better a man than I.”

 

Harry had no idea what to say to that. “Thanks, I guess,” he tried, bitter.

 

“Of course.” Dumbledore appeared prepared to say more, then shook his head and gestured Harry out.

 

Tom was waiting. He leaned casually against the wall of The Three Broomsticks, Disillusioned to all except Harry. “You have chosen well, darling boy,” he assured Harry.

 

Harry fell into his arms. Easier to just breathe Tom in, forget who he was, revel in his touch.

 

“Let’s go home,” Harry mumbled into Tom’s robes.

 

*

 

Harry did not sleep well. He thrashed about, getting tangled in the blankets and making it impossible to lie comfortably beside him.

 

No matter.

 

Voldemort drew Harry against him, his lips against the boy's scar, his hand splayed over his heart. Harry was his, now and always.

**Author's Note:**

> The premise was roughly inspired by the classic [Future Imperfect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/565793) by AzarDarkstar.
> 
> Voldemort realizing at the last moment that the Elder Wand is not loyal to him and taking necessary steps comes from [The Cave Incident](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4819339/1/The-cave-incident) by Brainstorm1001.
> 
> Tom Riddle successfully sneaking into a theater comes from a fic by either Paimpont or Eldritcher, though I can't remember which.


End file.
